


Dolls

by Erisette



Series: Dolls [1]
Category: VIXX
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen, Voodoo Doll (MV), general nastiness warning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-25
Updated: 2017-12-25
Packaged: 2019-02-20 02:46:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,256
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13137477
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Erisette/pseuds/Erisette
Summary: His next step brought him to the object of everyone's attention: the little doll, normally lovingly hung by its neck to dangle in the center when she left, which had instead been left carelessly at the edge of the table where it had fallen to the rough floor. It had shifted a little as he moved, and as he reached for it now it jerked backwards minutely, away from his reaching hand. He didn't try and grab it again, just met its sewn eyes with his own black-and-white ones. "...I don't like tests," her favorite said(Voodoo Doll MV)





	Dolls

**Author's Note:**

> Every time I watch this MV I want it to end differently: VIXX are masters of concept, as everyone knows, and every MV makes me want to know more about the world it's set in.
> 
> This story owes a debt of gratitude to Theodore Sturgeon's brilliant, nasty, and sticky story "A Way of Thinking", and to X-I-L, who told me I definitely should post it.

 

One of them was angry, a low-banked, smoldering anger that flared the most when the others were in the chair; but they were all angry, at times, when they could be, so he was merely Smallest.

One had long limbs that broke with cracks and made interesting angles, more than the others with their differing proportions: his face didn't react in the ways she liked, but he was still the most often broken, so he was Broken.

One screamed. They each screamed at times, but only one never seemed to lose his voice, never seemed to grow numb and forget to cry out, so he was Loud.

One was marked, where thousands of needles had sunk in bone-deep but left their ink just under the skin: for some reason, she never marked the others, and so he was Inked.

One was the tallest: he thought this probably meant he was the oldest as well, but the Smallest remembered a time before he was Smallest, so in the end he was Tallest.

One was her favorite.

 

* * *

  [](https://www.flickr.com/photos/154914812@N05/40995424720/in/dateposted-public/)

 

They all stood at the openings of their cells and looked into the chamber at the center: even Broken, who was strung up with his back to the room, craned his neck around to look, the sputtering light casting his soft cheeks into harsh angles and making his dark eyes enigmatic.

"Did she forget?" Loud asked, quiet for once.

"It's probably a test," Inked growled. "A trap."

They were all silent for a long time, as long as it takes a bruise to darken. It was Smallest who broke the silence. "Even if it is, I think we should try. Don't you?"

"Wouldn't it be worse, after?" Tallest said. "When she brings us back. Don't you think?"

"I do think," Smallest answered with one of his little twisty smiles. "It can be hard. I think she doesn't like it, much. Us thinking. It would be worse, but if we don't try it certainly won't be better."

"And maybe it will work. Maybe she won't...." Loud's words faded out, and he wound some of the trailing yarn of his clothing around his fingers. "Maybe."

Everyone's eyes turned towards her favorite. More than the others, it was her magic that held him in place: as a sign of her confidence, the square frame of his cell did not hold glass, or wire, or bars, and the strings that held him in place were merely wrapped around his arms rather than tied to pierced anchor-points. He hadn't spoken up already, and he didn't still: but he did shift, straightening up and gently testing his bonds. Broken opened his mouth as if to speak, but let it hang open with the words unvoiced. Her favorite, slowly and with care, unwound the strings from his limbs, slow but unwincing when his tugs pulled them out where they'd dug in. Everyone else held their breaths.

 

Finally loose, he took one hesitant and halting step towards the center, then another, then a third that had him stepping down and out. The fourth, fifth, and sixth steps were less faltering and the seventh brought him to the object of everyone's attention: the little doll, normally lovingly hung by its neck to dangle in the center when she left, which had instead been left carelessly at the edge of the table where it had fallen to the rough floor. It had shifted a little as he moved, and as he reached for it now it jerked backwards minutely, away from his reaching hand. He didn't try and grab it again, just met its sewn eyes with his own black-and-white ones. "...I don't like tests," her favorite said, and turned his back on the doll to go to Broken's cage.

While he climbed into Broken's cell and started detaching him from the taut wires that held him in place, Smallest also began to move. His cage had once had a sturdy glass window closing off the front of it, until she'd tossed him through it once and not bothered to fix the jagged mess; he ripped out the few anchors that held him, gladly, and climbed through the sharp edges with the strange grace only he had. Tallest's cell was the next easiest to get into, and Smallest dragged the door open as quietly as possible while Inked and Loud watched from behind their glass and waited their turns.

One by one, they assembled in the center, each giving the fallen doll a wide berth. Loud kept his hands clamped over his mouth, a reminder to silence. It was Tallest who led the way to the door, cautiously, holding the hand of her favorite (whose strange eyes didn't work as eyes should). Inked walked behind Loud, almost treading on his heels, his own eyes almost as far gone as her favorite's. Smallest and Broken were at the end, and as the others (cautiously, still fearing a trick) crossed the threshold Smallest stopped and looked back at the only one still at the center of the chamber, standing over the doll. "What's wrong?" he asked. Broken didn't answer, his eyes locked on the table full of implements as he cradled the arm she'd branded not two days ago. "Why are you waiting?" Smallest asked again. This time Broken looked up; his eyes were glossy even in the poor lighting, and the corners of his soft mouth were tight in unhappiness.

Broken, more than any of the others, more than his severe appearance or stoic expressions would suggest, had a heart that welled up with love. They had all loved her at some point--were made that way--but while no one else's love could survive in that room, he still loved her...in a way. Smallest, knowing him better than any of the others, didn't move any closer but held out his hand. Broken swallowed convulsively, several times, but stepped carefully over the doll and walked over to take the hand offered.

 

The way out was unclear, a maze of brick passages alike in their unevenness, and they stumbled through with increasing desperation as time passed with no clear sign of a way out. Smallest, who loved to touch when he could, flitted between them and urged them onwards: a hand at the small of Broken's and her favorite's backs, an arm hooked through Inked's arm, fingers knitted together with Tallest's so tightly that he couldn't pull free, Loud's hands pulled away from his mouth and a chaste kiss pressed to his cheek.

"We should split up," Inked said eventually, biting at the pad of his thumb where a jagged star was. "We're getting nowhere."

"I don't want anyone getting lost," Smallest hissed back, his arm tightening around the waist of her favorite. "We're not leaving anyone here."

"Won't she just make more?" Tallest asked, sounding like he didn't know what to feel about the possibility. "Or take more, or change more, or however it is we come to be."

"Why wouldn't she?" Inked said. "Surely she can. Ah, we should have taken the doll!" He flinched as soon as he said it, face twisting in displeasure: he knew why they hadn't touched the doll.

"It's running, too," her favorite said. They all looked at him, and if he couldn't see it he did seem to feel it. "The connection goes both ways, you know."

"Maybe it will have more luck than us," Loud said, with a little laugh in his voice.

"Here," Inked said as they came to one of the circular connectors that seemed to anchor the passages, a small hub with spoke-like halls going off it. "Let's just each pick a tunnel and go a little down it--not enough to split up, really, but if we each listen and feel and smell maybe we'll be able to pick the right one."

Everyone looked to her favorite, but he didn't decide. So everyone looked to Smallest, who frowned, his eyebrows drawing tightly together under his thick fringe of hair. "...yes," he said finally. "But only for a minute or two, then back to the center." They agreed: and they went, one to each.

 

In his own passageway Broken listened carefully, eyes closed and head tilted to one side. His sweater was half-unraveled and stiff with dirt and blood besides, but he still found it comforting to pull the long sleeves down over his fingertips and tuck his hands under his arms. He couldn't hear anything; he couldn't feel anything; he couldn't smell anything out of the ordinary. He stayed still, anyway, just in case something changed. Something did.

A harsh, gutteral noise broke out, though muffled, and Loud cried out, "Quick! Her favorite!" Broken turned and ran after the cry, awkward but fast, and found the others converging on the inner hub where her favorite was being drawn in jerks into the air, his body bent in wretched angles. Loud was frozen, quivering, beneath him, whole body tensed as a lesser version of the same force tried to pull him towards the passage they'd entered from. "What do we do??" He wailed.

The others were equally frozen, feeling echoes of the compelling force, until something seemed to light up within Tallest. "Both ways!" He said urgently, going to Smallest and grabbing his arm willingly for once. "You remember, it goes...it goes both ways."

 

The other three around the edges made sounds that seemed punched out of them and scrambled for the center, Tallest stretching up on his toes to grab for her favorite's clenched and dangling fist while Broken threw himself on hands and knees for Smallest to stand on his back. Inked grabbed for Loud, wrenching him back and away, towards the hallway he had just been examining. "It smells fresher here," he said, laying his cheek on the other's shoulder for just a moment before going back to help the others. Tallest had both hands locked tight around the fist, and Smallest had pulled a leg into reach that both he and Broken clung to like their lives depended on it. Inked added his own hands to her favorite's arm. She did something, back in the room, back with the doll, and they all felt it like a hook through their guts: her favorite more than felt it, and was nearly torn from their grasp.

Inked felt his heels skid a few inches across the ground, and as he and Tallest held ever tighter to the arm there was a sick crack as it popped out of its socket. Her favorite made a harsh noise in his throat, but they still clung grimly, even as they started to lose their footing and be dragged along by the force, even as a finger snapped in Tallest's grasp. "Loud!" Smallest ground out, and there was another pair of hands to help.

It made the difference.

They stopped losing ground. Then they started gaining it, moving with agonizing slowness towards the hallway that Inked had chosen, the one that smelled a little less like dust and dead things. They pulled her favorite down to the ground, and once his feet found purchase he helped them, weakly against the force trying to drag him away, but with a look of heady determination on his face. They gathered momentum as they went deeper into the passageway, still leaning against the force like people walking into a strong wind, still dragging her favorite bodily with them: until suddenly, there was a high, nasty sound that echoed within their skulls and their progress became much easier.

 

"Does it look a little different here?" Tallest panted, arms still wrapped firmly around her favorite's ribcage as he walked backwards. The others looked around and saw that the walls were still brick, still dark, but now with hints of moisture around the edges, bits of green softer than yarn peeking through cracks here and there.

"It's green!" Loud said. "It's moss? I like it. I like moss. Can I be called Moss?"

"Will she follow us?" Smallest asked her favorite quietly.

"Once we're...out? I don't think so. I don't know that she even can." As though he had spoken it into being, there was a door: and they went through it. Their surroundings were dark, darker than the interior but...better, somehow. Hard to see anything, but the looming presence behind them was so clearly a separate thing that they all heaved out a breath and set her favorite gently down to rest against the outer wall. He sat there, limp as a doll.

"The poor thing, left in there," Broken whispered.

 

"Isn't there anything we can do?" Tallest asked, shifting one of his hands to awkwardly pat her favorite's head. "So she doesn't come after us for sure? Or so she can't do it again?"

"What do you think?" Smallest asked as he carefully set his shoulder joint back in place. "You are her favorite. You knew her best."

"I'm not her favorite anymore, I would think," He said. He started to smile, a smile like nothing they'd seen before, a smile that made them start to smile too. "I'll need something else to be called by."

"We'll have plenty of time to pick," Moss said brightly.

He was still smiling, but less now as he looked up at what they'd left. "Fire," he said eventually. "She liked to use heat, but I always wondered why she never brought in fire. Fire would work, I think."

"I think we can manage that," Smallest said.

* * *

 


End file.
